What do members of the wider public know about theological education and think about the religious leaders that seminaries train?  Such questions recently prompted Auburn Theological Seminary's Center for the Study of Theological Education to conduct a study entitled "Missing Connections: Public Perceptions of Theological Education and Religious Leadership." To find some answers, the Auburn Center, located in New York City, decided against the predictable approach of mailing out questionnaires and instead spoke directly to people in four cities with different levels of seminary presence and varied religious climates:  Atlanta, Georgia; Portland, Oregon; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Shreveport, Louisiana. Those interviewed included newspaper reporters, college presidents, elected officials, business and non-profit leaders, clergy and laity.

Auburn's interviewers discovered that theological schools are "virtually invisible," even in the cities in which they are located. Although not all respondents were as poorly informed as the member of Congress who confused his local seminary with a nursing home, theological schools and their graduates are not widely viewed as civic and educational assets to their cities and regions.  The most significant exceptions to this public anonymity were African-American clergy, liberal rabbis, and the presidents of historically African-American theological schools, who have established track records for speaking on civic projects and policies.  The summary of the report is in its title, "Missing Connections."  Members of the public perceive a lack of involvement in civic affairs by theological schools, and they regard this absence as a missed opportunity.  (The full text of the Auburn Center's report may be found on its website, http://www.auburnsem.org,and a limited number of printed copies are available.)

For this writer, two elements of the Auburn report suggest avenues forc hanging the public perception of theological education. First, the report observes that public leaders "are not always clear-and when they are clear often differ with each other-about what increased religious presence in public life would really mean." Second, in reference to the low visibility of clergy and seminaries, Auburn President Barbara G. Wheeler points out that "the patterns uncovered by our study are not unique to religion."

These observations from the Auburn report suggest two avenues for energizing the dormant connections of seminaries to public life. First, as educational institutions, theological schools are ideal forums for sustained discussion of "what increased religious presence in public life would really mean." As regular readers of "Sightings" know, varied expressions of religion are omnipresent in American society, and theological schools have a public educational obligation to assist citizens in exploring and interpreting these varied "connections."  Second, the perceived public invisibility of ministry as a profession raises questions about the civic dimension of professional education in all fields.  Theological schools have underdeveloped "connections" to professional schools for business, social lwork, law, and medicine, whom theological schools might properly convene in order to rethink the ethical and civic responsibilities that are constitutive of professional careers and that transcend the narrow "practice" of any given profession.

W. Clark Gilpin is professor of the history of Christianity and of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.  He is the author of*A Preface to Theology* (1996).